Banoka Wilderness Camp

The Banoka Wilderness Camp is very close to the Banoka Airport.  It’s on private land that borders Moremi National Park.  This is in the northern region of the Okavango Delta in Botswana.  This is a very sparsely populated area.  The camp itself is off by itself as we only saw one other camp while we were in this area.  You can see our first view of the camp with the main building in the center and the tents off to the right side.

The camp staff sang and greeted us as we arrived.  You can see that the main building is just a pole platform and roof building.  This was where we ate our meals, had drinks, and discussions with our guides.

This is Vicky and Cory on the porch in front of Cory’s tent.  The tents were also on platforms on poles.  The animals came through camp at night and occasionally during the day.

Vicky is on our bed and as you can see, this was a real tent cabin, with the emphasis on tent.

But really, we did have all the necessary amenities – and they came with great views!

Kasane to Banoka, Botswana

We flew from the Kasane Airport, about an hour drive from Chobe National Park, to Banoka, which is in the Okavango Delta.  From Kasane Airport, we flew in a 7-seater airplane.  We met our pilot out on the runway and he showed us a map of our hour flight to Banoka.  Then he gave us our safety instructions and asked if we had any questions.  I asked if I could fly co-pilot and he said, “Sure, come on up, but don’t touch anything”.  It was that kind of flight.  I had a great seat for viewing but there really wasn’t much to see.  Our flight was over a dry, leafless woodland with no animals and no water.  It’s the dry season in southern Africa.

Landing in Banoka was not much better.  The Okavango Delta doesn’t have much water this time of the year.  You can see my photo from the plane shortly before we landed.  This will give you a good idea of what the Okavango Delta looks like this time of the year.

There wasn’t much to the Banoka Airport.  It was just a landing strip in the woodland country.

Although, it wasn’t totally without amenities.  It did have a safety station which you can see under the end of the plane’s wing.

Upon closer inspection, I really didn’t feel all that safe having the safety station, but that was all there was to the Banoka Airport.

Close Animal Viewing

It’s hard to tell from the photos how close you get to the animals.  The answer is that you get quite close, which is sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing.  I’ll start by showing you Vicky, Cory, and a few others in our safari vehicle.  It’s really made for game viewing.  It’s also completely safe, according to our guides, if you stay fully inside of the vehicle and its boundaries.  We were told to not lean out of the vehicle or to stick out our arms or legs.  If you do, then animals reacting to you can come into play.  

In this photo, we were probably looking at 60 or 70 impalas.  They didn’t seem too concerned about us.  They moved off a bit to where you see them in the photo, but then they stopped walking away and started eating again.

In my other photos, which aren’t great, my camera couldn’t determine what I was trying to take in my photo, the person or the animal.  And of course, I wanted both in focus, which was not to be.  But at least it gives you an idea of how close we got.  Cory got a lot of great photos of the lions and you can see why.

In the case of this group of elephants, we were too close.  We came around a corner and through some brush and we found ourselves right in the middle of a parade of elephants.  It might have been fine but some of the younger mother elephants with young baby elephants were not too happy with us.  You can see the elephant in front of Cory but the group to the left of our vehicle were less than half that distance.

We also ended up in the middle of a tower of giraffes, though I could only get one in the photo with Vicky.  The giraffes didn’t seem too alarmed but they did slowly move a little further away from us.

New Kanini Bar

One late afternoon, while staying at the Baobab Safari Camp, we drove into the nearby small town of Mabele.  The reason for going to Mabele was to visit the Lwaavo Art and Culture Center to see and experience some local basket weaving, for which this area is well known.  We saw the entire process in demonstrations and we even got to try our hand at basket weaving.  Afterwards, we purchased some baskets from the ladies that made them.

On our way out of town, heading back to our camp, we stopped at the end of town to visit a local watering hole.  It’s not a misspelling, the name of the place was the New Kanini Kanini High Life Bar and General Dealer.  You can see Cory and me in front of the bar with the setting sun in our faces.

The bar was much smaller inside than it looked from the outside.  The bar portion was small at least.  I guess the General Dealer portion took up most of the space.  At any rate, the local drink of choice was called Chibuku.  It was fermented sorghum.  They kept it chilled which made it a little easier to drink.  The Chibuku was yeasty, sour, and hearty.  You can see Cory downing a gulp in the next photo while our tour guide, Lloyd, looked like he couldn’t believe that we would try it. 

So, how was the Chibuku?  Well, the next thing I knew, Cory and Vicky had started dancing and were leading most of our group in dancing.  Of course, the bar was so small that they couldn’t do much dancing inside, so they took the dancing outside.  They had everyone moving and shaking…

How much were they moving and shaking?  Vicky eventually got down into the dirt to lead the group.  It got so wild that, as you can see, the local towns people started to come out of their houses and come over to the bar to see what all the commotion was about.  You can see a few of the first locals arriving behind Vicky in the photo.

What about me?  I’m not saying just how much Chibuku I drank but I will say it was tasty and interesting and really hearty.  But the drinking and dancing was not a problem.  The problem for me came when we headed out on safari the next morning at 6:00am.  As you can see in the last photo, it’s not getting any easier….

Chobe Signs

I probably should have started our tour of Chobe National Park with this first photo.  But aside from showing off part of my family, the park entrance sign has some interesting information on it.  Our tour operators followed the rules of the park quite closely, we never drove off road, we never littered, and we never slept out in the open… 

A highway cuts through Chobe National Park.  The highway has gates on it on both sides of the park and at the appropriate hour, they close the gates and lock up the park.  But this photo is a few of the signs on the road in the park.  Everyone is familiar with these signs.  We have deer warning signs very near our house.  But in this case, the park signage people were not kidding.  You can see that in the next two photos.  We ended up breaking and stopping for quite a few animals while in Chobe National Park.

The last photo is an “unofficial sign” that some people have been drinking too much – to be standing out in the open in big game country…but we weren’t sleeping.

Safari Game Viewing by Vehicle

I got a response on my blog about our safety with the lions being so close to our vehicle, and of course, our vehicle had open sides which would be an easy hop for a lion.  According to our safari guides, we were completely safe.  They told us that the lions see the vehicle somewhat like a rock or other inanimate object.  But they cautioned us that we should speak quietly, not make too much camera noise and above all else, we were not to lean out of the vehicles or stick our arms or legs out, such as to get a better photo.  We had the same experience with lions in east Africa.  In Tanzania, we even saw a cheetah climb on top of a vehicle but the people inside were safe.  The animals climb on top to get a better view of their prey in flat lands.  But it takes a lot to stay calm with a big cat on your roof.  We never had that experience in southern Africa, but there is always an element of danger out in the wilds.  I’ll put up a few more photos to address this issue further.

I mentioned that two of the seven lions came past our vehicle close enough for me to pull their tails.  You can see a lion here with a vehicle nearby.  You can also see that the lion was showing no interest in us.

This next photo is crocodiles and there were probably close to a dozen in the photo area, both in front, on the island in the river, and in the water on the side where you see the vehicle.  There were also more in the vicinity that are not in the photo area.  We got very close to the animals, though tried to not be intrusive.  That might be a contradiction, I’m not sure.  But the animals definitely are used to the vehicles.  Some animals run away, some react to them, and others, like the lions, treat the vehicles like big rocks.

The one animal that probably caused the most concern was the elephants.  They definitely reacted to us being so close, especially when there were young mother elephants with new babies.  In those situations, an elephant might charge the vehicle to protect their young.  This can also happen if they get caught by surprise, like rounding a corner right into their midst.  One of our safari guides had an elephant charge his vehicle and lift it up and turn it over and smash it.  He was still inside but he survived okay, though I’m sure it was a harrowing experience.

Of course, there are other problems.  The guides say to not get out of the vehicles unless they give us permission.  That is usually for a tea/coffee break or a sundowner or a bathroom break.  But on this trip while in the Okavango Delta, our land rover broke down and would not start.  They radioed for another vehicle but we all got out while our dead jeep was being worked on.  We could hear some cats while we were standing about and there were both crocodiles and hippos in the area.  We were fine but those things do happen.

Then again, we usually stopped at sundown for a cocktail.  We exited our jeeps and had a drink and snacks.  That sometimes came with animals too, as you can see in the last photo.  This would probably fall into the category of self-inflicted wounds...

Lion Hunting?

Cecil the lion was killed by an American dentist in a reserve next to Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe on August 25, 2015.  We arrived in the area on September 10th.  Our tour guide and our safari guides were talking about this incident quite a bit.  We all thought about it while we were there as we saw plenty of lions on this trip.  So I’ve decided to give everyone some insight into how tough it would be to shoot a lion in southern Africa.

The American dentist paid some $50,000 to shoot Cecil.  The story goes that his guides baited Cecil with food of some sort to lure Cecil out of Hwange National Park.  Never mind that the dentist and his guides did not have a permit to shoot a lion, inside or outside of the park.  At any rate, the daring American dentist and his guides lured Cecil out of the park, where they lay in wait to kill him.  The American dentist eventually shot Cecil with a bow and arrow and then followed him for 40 hours until Cecil died.  Ah, a trophy at last.

My question to everyone is this: how difficult do you think that was?  And do you think it was dangerous?  Was there really any sport involved?  The dictionary defines the word “hunt”: to pursue wild animals for food or sport.  The American dentist was not interested in food.  He was no doubt eating high off the hog at his lodge.  So was his pursuit of Cecil “sport”?  I would say not.  The American dentist was simply trying to acquire a trophy, the lion’s head.  I’m sure he felt it would make him seem like a big man to have a trophy to show off to prove what a real stud he is.  I’m going to give you some insight into just how silly this is in reality.

We were in Chobe National Park driving along the Chobe River’s edge when we spotted a pride of seven lions.  They were about 100 yards away, across the Chobe River, in Namibia.  Some of the lions were sitting while others were lying down in the short grass.  We stopped our land rover and parked.  Our group of eight tourists were chatting excitedly and snapping photos like crazy.  We were right out in the open, sitting in our land rover, not being quiet, and making lots of camera noise too.  We were not stalking these lions or trying to lure them in any way.  You can see five of them in the first photo, which is substantially zoomed in.

After a few minutes, the lions began to get up and walk towards us.  In the second photo, you can see six of them walking in a line.  If you look between the third and fourth walking lion, you can see the head of the seventh lion sticking up in the grass about half-way back up the ridge.  Still, we were not lying quietly in wait for them.  We were chatting and snapping photos with the rest of the tourists.

The lions continued to walk in somewhat of a zig-zag pattern but always in our direction.  They would stop and rest, then resume.  Several of them stopped for a drink in the river.  They would separate and then sometimes come back together.  You can see three of them walking together in the next photo.

Two of the seven lions walked by our land rover so close that I could have hit them over the head with a hammer.  You can see one of the lions that walked right next to our jeep in the fourth photo.  Do you think you could have shot this lion from that distance, without any danger to yourself?  You can see the brush behind the lion in this photo and that’s where the lions were heading.  The temperature was rising as the day unfolded and the lions were looking for a cool place to take a nap.  The bushes right behind our land rover was that place.

All seven lions eventually found a place in the bushes to lay down for a nap.  Most of the seven ended up being right next to each other.  This would have been another easy opportunity to shoot a lion.  It was only about ten yards away from us.  So, pursuing a lion for “sport” – I don’t think so.  Did a dead Cecil prove the American dentist was a real man?  Not in my book.  Shooting a lion in Africa is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Chobe Small Birds

Botswana has a wide variety of landscapes and therefore a large diversity of birds.  The same goes for Chobe National Park.  Botswana has around 500 species of birds and we probably saw at least 100 of them.  The large animals in Africa seem to get most of the attention but the birds can really be show-stealers.  Many of the birds are really beautiful with great colors and can be highly entertaining.

These birds are all small birds, which are the most colorful birds.  The large birds were around in abundance, but mostly browns and whites for color.  So I’m sending some photos of smaller more colorful birds this time, though the guineafowl is not that small, just colorful.

This is a Southern Carmine Bee-eater that I caught in mid-flight, mostly thanks to my son, Andrew, for loaning me his camera.  Carmine Bee-eaters are migratory birds and breed in this area along the larger rivers, such as the Chobe.  They are insect eaters including of course, bees.  They are attracted to things like brush fires and vehicles which helps them catch insects.  For this reason, we saw lots of Bee-eaters while we were driving on safari.

This is a starling, also in mid-flight, which I think is the Greater Blue-eared starling.  Our starlings at home are black, so I really appreciated the African starlings.  These songbirds were mostly seen in the open woodland and savanna areas, sometimes in large groups.  They seemed to spend most of their time on the ground, looking for insects.

These are guineafowl.  They are around the size of a chicken and are quite colorful.  We must have seen over a thousand guineafowl usually in groups of fifteen to forty or more.  They seemed to be everywhere.  They were always on the ground eating bugs or seeds.

This colorful bird is the Lilac-breasted roller which they say has seven different colors.  They usually perch on tree tops and bushes and we saw lots of them, frequently very close to our vehicle, perched and scanning the air for large insects.

This bird is a bulbul.  We heard these birds more than we saw them, so I was happy to get this photo.  I also included this photo because it was reported to be spring time in southern Africa when we were there, but you could not tell.  At least in this photo, you can see some buds breaking on the branches, which was rare.  This area is in the second year of a severe drought, much like California.

Animal Close-ups

While we all got close to the animals, Cory took the best close-up photos.  I believe that these are all Cory photos.  All the instances were pretty benign, except for the elephant.  In that case, we came around a corner and found ourselves in the middle of a parade of elephants.  This one and a few others had young elephants with them and they let us know that we were intruding.

The animals are a lion, a pod of hippos, the elephant, a young Kudu, and a southern giraffe.

Large Animals

These are just a few photos of some of the larger animals.  We got quite close to the animals on occasion.  You can see that in these photos.

In the first photo, the Chobe River is at the bottom of the ridge, right behind the giraffes.  The bulk of the land in the background is in Namibia, though the giraffe’s are in Chobe National Park.

We saw plenty of Kudu, mostly in groups of three to five.  The kudu didn’t seem too alarmed when we were nearby them.

Stripes on a zebra are like our fingerprints, in that each one is unique.  You can notice that in addition to white and black, they also had brown stripes.

This is a sable.  We saw less sable than kudus but we still saw plenty, sometimes in groups of around a dozen.

These two are cape buffalo.  Unlike in eastern Africa, we only saw small groups in southern Africa with the largest group being about twenty.

Large Animal Groupings

Botswana is a good-sized country in central southern Africa.  Botswana is landlocked and sparsely populated with only about two million people.  Some 45% of the country is either national parks or land preserves.  Botswana is mostly flat with about 70% being part of the Kalahari Desert.  The Kalahari is a semi-arid sandy savanna with very fine sand.  Rain in the Kalahari varies from a few inches a year to twenty inches of rain a year and as a result of that, the vegetation varies as well.  Some areas have very heavy growth while other areas do not.  But either way, the Kalahari has a lot of vegetation for a desert.

Chobe National Park was Botswana’s first national park and it’s the second largest national park in Botswana.  Chobe is in the northern part of Botswana and the Chobe River forms the park’s northern border.  The area of Chobe national park is very near the borders with Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. 

Southern Africa is reported to have some of the largest animal populations in Africa.  I don’t doubt that, but I would add that while the animal populations might be bigger than other areas of Africa, they might also be harder to see.  We traveled to eastern Africa some years back and saw huge animal groupings.  In eastern Africa, such as the Serengeti, the plains are open so the animals are easy to see.  But much of southern Africa is woodland and areas of dense vegetation.  That makes it harder to see the extent of a large herd of animals.

We saw the largest animal groupings on our trip in Chobe National Park.  These photos are some of the larger groups of animals that we saw, at least that we know we saw.  The first four photos were taken in relatively open areas.  There were about fifty to sixty elephants in the parade that you see in the first photo.  I had to stay zoomed back to get in as many as I did as they were spread out quite a bit.  But this was a large herd of elephants.

The zebra dazzle that you see also had about fifty to sixty in it, possibly a few more.  They aren’t all in the photo.

The rank of impalas here had about forty impalas, but we saw other ranks of impalas that numbered over one hundred.  You can also see some baboons in the photo.

We counted eighteen hippos in this pod.  That was the biggest pod of hippos close together that we saw, though we saw many more hippos in the Okavango Delta.

The last photo shows you why I stated earlier about large animal groupings “that we know we saw”.  Often times, we could see some and see that there were many more in the bush, but couldn’t tell how many more.  The tower of giraffes feeding here had many more but we could never see more than about a dozen at once, for obvious reasons.

Baobab Safari Lodge

Our first camp in the wilds of southern Africa was the Baobab Safari Lodge.  It’s located on a private reserve adjacent to Chobe National Park in Botswana.  The camp was on the ledge of a hillside and overlooked a large chunk of land, most of which was in Namibia.  So the camp was adjacent to Chobe NP and also on the border of Botswana and Namibia.  We liked all the camps and all of them were similar in their layout and operations.  Camps consisted of a main building which was mostly just a pole building with a roof.  The primary functions of this building were meals, drinks and meetings.  Then there was a group of tents or tent-cabins, usually ten or less.  Other than that, there were only a few staff quarters buildings and an outbuilding or storage building and that was it.  These lodges were well staffed and we received very good service, even including free laundry service.

These are photos of the Baobab Lodge in Botswana.

Upon arriving at a lodge, the staff would be there to welcome us with songs and sometimes dancing.  They would also hand us a cold washcloth to wipe our faces and hands each time we arrived at camp.  We were served a cold drink when we arrived and sometimes snacks.  The staff were always smiling and friendly and we really enjoyed their singing. 

This is Cory standing in front of her tent-cabin.  The cabins at this lodge had real walls and floors.  Above that was a canvas tent roof.  I didn’t mind except that it was windy here some of the time and the tent roof flapped much of the night, sometimes making a lot of noise. 

Our cabin was right next to Cory’s and this is the view from our cabin porch.  You can see that there was no fencing.  From here, we saw all sorts of animals including elephants, zebra, baboons (who lived in the nearby trees), cape buffalo, warthogs, many varieties of antelope, sable, giraffes, and many birds.  If you look down the hillside, you can see a line of green trees at the bottom of the hill.  That is part of the Chobe River.  All the land on the other side of the river is Namibia. 

We were escorted by camp staff to and from our tents, except during daylight hours.  Once in our tents at night, we had no communications with anyone.  There were no phones or electronic communications in place.  We could hear wild animals all night long, including some of the big cats.  Our directions IF we had a problem at night, such as a wild animal problem, were to blow the air-horn, turn on our lights, and the staff would come rescue us.  You can see that Vicky was fully prepared to signal for help.  You will also notice that we had mosquito netting over our beds but the bugs were really not bad at all in Chobe.

You can see our chef working at the BBQ.  Most everything at these camps was done somewhat out in the open.  The chef’s biggest chore was probably watching out for baboons and other varmints.  She was BBQ’ing steaks, sausage, and pork chops for dinner.  I had some of each and they were all good.  The rest of dinner included corn soup, homemade bread, polenta with tomato sauce, butternut squash, spinach, and watermelon for dessert.  On this night, we ate outside in the open in the area behind and to the right of the chef.

Are you ready to go to southern Africa?

Vicky and I got back from southern Africa at the beginning of this month (10/1/2015).  Work, technology, and grandkids have slowed my blog delivery a bit, but I’m working hard to bring our last trip to life.

Our three-week trip had lots of highlights.  One main highlight was that our daughter, Cory, came along with us on this trip.  One of the best parts of that, aside from enjoying Cory’s company, is being able to use all of her good photos.  We visited four countries: Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.  We also made a couple of short jaunts into Namibia, specifically the Namibian panhandle.  We saw lots of animals as we spent twelve days out in national parks or in reserves that bordered national parks, sleeping in tents or tent cabins.  We were camped right out among the wild animals, with no fences at any of the camps.  We had plenty of excitement out in the wilds…

It was a long trip in many ways.  For instance, we had 13 flights this trip and spent about 54 hours in the air.  To be sure, the flights from San Francisco to Atlanta and from Atlanta to Johannesburg and back were the bulk of the flight time, but we also had a lot of short flights on very small planes.  How small?  Well to give you a hint, I got to fly co-pilot four times, much to my fellow passengers consternation…

So get ready for a great trip to southern Africa.  I’ve included a few photos to hint about what’s to come. 

About the photos: the lion is in Chobe National Park.  The next three photos are from the Okavango Delta near Moremi National Park. These are some of Cory's great photos.